Internet of Things

Smart value creation thanks to the Internet of Things

With fully connected value chains, the Internet of Things changes the rules of the game.

50 billion devices networked in the Internet of Things

New growth opportunities for industry

Development of new business models

Smart machines, inventory systems and operating resources

Networking of production and the consumer

Internet of Things: new growth opportunities for enterprises

The growth of the Internet knows only one direction, and that is upward. At the end of 2015, there were over three billion people connected via the World Wide Web – and more are joining every second (ITU, 2015). And even though it has not yet reached everyone, its influence continues to penetrate into new areas. For example, 15 billion "things" have already been digitally networked via the web. But that is just the start of the Internet of Things (IoT). Experts from Cisco expect 50 billion devices to be interlinked via the IoT by 2020. The potential number of networkable objects has been estimated at 1.5 trillion. This includes computers, tablets and smartphones but also wearables, entertainment electronics, domestic appliances, vehicles and industrial machinery. And even the Internet of Things itself is only an intermediate stage: In the future, data, people, machines and processes will be linked in the Internet of Everything. Other drivers of this development are cloud technologies, big data and IT security. Together, they are paving the way for the digital transformation of enterprises.

Internet of Things

The corporate world cannot avoid digitization. All experts agree on this – whether they belong to IT, economy or policy. The only open question is how fast this will happen. Yet waiting is not an option: Everything that can be digitized, will be digitized and everything that can be connected, will be connected.

Lower cost, higher productivity

Especially machine-to-machine communication (M2M) builds a promising basis for innovative and disruptive business models that will open up new growth opportunities. Fully networked value chains mean a new production logic in which intelligent machines, inventory systems and operating resources exchange data and manage themselves without any human intervention. A company can therefore design a much more flexible product portfolio with the aid of the Internet of Things and adapt its production processes more quickly – to respond to component shortages, for example, or customer requirements.

The Multi-IoT Service Platform forms the basis

It requires not only experienced partners but also, equally important, a suitable infrastructure in the form of a high-performance IoT platform such as Deutsche Telekom's Multi IoT Service Platform (MISP). This combines all the benefits of the best Internet of Things (IoT) platform providers under one roof. Each customer is provided with the platform that best suits his own IoT project. This kind of MISP ensures that the selected IoT applications and M2M products and solutions offer the best possible support for the current or planned business model. It also enables IoT devices to provide one-stop and end-to-end multi-vendor services.

Numerous Internet of Things application scenarios are based on this approach. For example, monitoring and tracking can be used for the early detection of possible problems with goods in transit, refrigeration systems and machine components. Mobile Assets Management uses software to monitor, navigate and coordinate the movements of agricultural machinery, forklifts, excavators and many other mobile objects. Predictive Maintenance Solutions on the other hand rely on hundreds of sensors to continuously determine the condition of equipment such as trains or production machinery. And an intelligent IoT-based logistics and fleet management system enables its users to optimize truck capacity utilization, fuel consumption, and much more.